This invention relates generally to injection site marking devices and, more particularly, to an injection site marking method and apparatus.
Persons having certain illnesses, medical conditions, or diseases must inject themselves or be injected by another person using a syringe filled with a liquid medicament. For example, a person having diabetes may be required to inject himself with insulin every day. In fact, some diabetics must inject themselves with multiple types of insulin every day. It is not recommended to inject into the same skin location on consecutive days as this may result in the breakdown of skin tissue. In addition, it is difficult for a diabetic to keep track of which type of insulin has or has not been injected—resulting in the risk that the same type of insulin may be injected twice while another type of insulin may not be injected at all.
Various devices have been proposed for identifying the site of a syringe injection so as to aid a user in not injecting in the same site on consecutive days. Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 5,192,270 discloses that a protective needle cover includes a dimple having a small amount of pigment therein such that the cover may be pressed against a user's skin before or after injection to identify an injection site. Although assembly effective, the existing patents do not provide for an injection site marking to be made simultaneous with the process of making an injection. Further, the past patents and proposals do not solve the problem of indicating from which of multiple vials have been injected at one sitting.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for marking an injection site that makes a marking on a user's skin simultaneous with making an injection. Further, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for marking an injection site that makes it easy for a user to determine which medicine from multiple vials has been injected and which has not been injected.